A few of my friends, on hearing about my blog have asked where they can get my first book. And that's just it; you can't. Life as Opinion [before that it was called Mystic Shove] was turned down 48 times by agents before I moved on. Four of them requested partials [three chapters] and three asked for the full manuscript; all eventually turning it down: "Loved it, but couldn't sell it in this market..." was the best feedback I got.
And they were right. It wasn't ready. Not even close.[Still isn't actually....]
The good news was, right before getting my final rejection I started writing my second book, and sure enough, the shit day Billy Connelly was having made me feel not too bad about myself [yeah, I created his shitty day, but he did the rest; more on that another time]. Many aspiring writers go the self-publishing route after rejection, and you can't blame them. Nowadays you can upload your novel on Kindle in twelve minutes [so I've heard], and who knows, maybe it will sell. The problem is, for me anyway, I want to put my very best out there, so if the people who do this for a living say a book isn't ready, then it isn't. [Ask me again in three years if I'm still not published...]
So, when I finished Into the Middle Distance, I didn't rush out and start sending it to every agent in the big apple. Instead, I put it aside, took a few weeks off and then dug in and started editing. First I reread it again from front to back, skipping simple typos, and focusing instead on flow and story line, finding things like Billy going to bed on a Friday night and waking up on a Tuesday morning. That was six months ago. Since then I've been rewriting the entire book, from scratch...word by word, page by page...it's hell. As of now, I'm halfway done. Finished chapter ten last night [might need to recheck it as I was getting pretty deep into the cabernet at that point...]. Once I've finished that, I'll reread it in one sitting [God Save the Queen] and then send it to my new editor [Thanks Deborah!] as well as to a few of my beta-readers [you know who you are-thank you].
And then we'll see. Thanks for everyone's support.
Geoff
It sounds like you have a solid plan, Geoff. I'm not a writer, but I would be willing to bet that those writers who appear to write effortlessly actually put hours into refining and rejecting their work.
ReplyDeleteThanks April. I know you are right, and I've had to commit to working that hard to get it right...over and over.
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